Friday, December 22, 2006

Old Wave

I hadn't fallen in love with him at that point but I guess it was apt that about five years ago I spotted Luke Haines on the down escalator at Holborn Tube Station. How could one fail to recognise him? A pasty faced misanthrope, he was most unlikely candidate for pop stardom this side of Cathal Coughlan appearing on Cheggars Plays Pop.

Fast forward five years, he is now at that hat wearing phase that all middle aged blokes who make music go through, and the recognition of his own peculiar brand of musical genius has yet to be fully embraced outside of a small circle of obsessives. Thankfully, it appears that one of this obsessives ensures that Mr Haines is still in a position to make records, and another member of that exclusive club, the Guardian music critic, Alexis Petridis, has reviewed the latest album in today's Guardian.

I used to think that Luke Haines best bet for a bank balance in the black was for him to become a Richard X type writer/producer type who would channel his poison pen lyrics wrapped in sugary pop through Stage School wannabes, but then I remembered that was probably the whole point of Black Box Recorder.

One single reaching number twenty in the British charts over the the course of five years being together unfortunately wasn't the greatest of returns.

But back to the here and now: the video for the title track off the new album, 'Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop', is available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube. Poor Luke, a man out of time and out of place. If he lived in Williamsburg, that video would be on heavy rotation on New York Noise, and he would be guest presenting the show with that bloke out of Fischerspooner every other week.